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DIY Digital Marketing: Making The Most Of What You Have

Are you making the most of what you have? The fact is to do well in business we need for people to know what we do. The practice of letting people know what we do is called marketing. We live in an age where Social Media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are available for free. This means the cost of accessibility to marketing is $0 (Woohoo!). Businesses now have incredible opportunities to harness the power of DIY digital marketing.

So with this logic, if we are on Social Media platforms and using them regularly, our return on investment should be huge, right? We should have customers queueing up…

Perhaps not. ‘Free’ tools can lead us to to have a false sense of what we can achieve with DIY digital marketing. I refer to and often talk about the 4 DIY Digital Dangers.

1. No clarity of priorities.

The biggest challenge of actually being successful in doing DIY Digital is time. I created and maintain my own website, including my blog, Facebook Page, Instagram, LinkedIn and Email Marketing. All of which takes time. And, it is important to recognise that your time is valuable. After all you have to consider the value of each activity you do and whether it will achieve the desired result (such as earning you the right amount of money for you to have the life you want).

2. Not learning.

Knowledge is power. Getting educated on how and why to have a good online presence is invaluable. Understanding what should be in a good website, why you should be on Social Media and where, helps to refine your focus, be able to prioritise, and employ strategies that achieve your business goals.

3. No allocated budget.

For every marketing activity offline, a budget is readily allocated (e.g. Business Cards, Brochures, Banners). Online, there is a perception that all activities can be done for free. While the budgets can be significantly less with DIY digital marketing, to make the most of activities it is important to allocate funds to maximise your potential.

4. Outsourcing too much.

Now I’m a big advocate of outsourcing. In fact I do it regularly and recommend it. What I say is a big watch out for to be on guard against ‘Over Outsourcing’. When you outsource without consideration and knowledge, you restrict your ability to supervise or critique the activity being done for you.

The danger is that you waste money. You pay for something to be done and quite simply don’t know if it is delivering your desired result. This week I had a client who had a website built for them within the last 12 months. They realised after our training session that the site had many missed opportunities for optimisation. They were told it had been optimised, but they actually had no idea what that meant.

Being DIY Digital is not about becoming a professional Digital Marketer, it is about having knowledge to ensure your Digital Marketing activities add value to your business and are not time-wasting activities.

When you’re aware of these dangers, you have the chance to resolve them.

Dot for the Day: Are you doing DIY to achieve your goals or to save money? Make sure you stay focused on what you want to achieve to ensure you stay on the path to success.